david_c

Upgrade? Are you looking at the same hand? The hand given in this thread is ♠Q4 ♥A9 ♦KT87 ♣AK943 which is plenty strong enough for a 1NT opening. Maybe you are referring to the hand in Helene's thread, ♠Ax ♥xx ♦Axxxx ♣AQxx ?

Yeah I don't like 1NT. Some reasons to prefer 1♦: (i) You don't have a rebid problem with opening 1♦. (ii) All those aces! They make the hand good for playing in a suit contract, and relatively bad for being declarer in NT. (iii) Although the strength is just about enough to open 1NT, you are right at the bottom of the range. So if the auction goes, say, 1♦ - 1♥ - 2♣ - 2♦, you can happily pass without worrying that you have much undisclosed extra strength. Whereas, if you had an extra queen, then you would have a problem after 1♦ - 1♥ - 2♣ - 2♦, having to decide whether to make another move to show your strong hand. Showing your strength immediately with a 1NT opening would then be more attractive.

East says 4NT is keycard for hearts, and the 5♣ response shows none, so East "knows" that the partnership is missing two keycards.* So surely 5♥ is a LA. Since 6♥ scores better, if we rule that East made use of UI then N/S certainly have been damaged. The only question is, does the hesitation suggest 6♥ over 5♥? Ben is right, of course, that there are many possible reasons for the hesitation. Nevertheless, I think 6♥ is suggested. East was clearly planning to bid slam opposite one keycard, but he hears a response saying zero. However East knows that partner was uncomfortable with his bid, so it becomes rather attractive to just bid slam anyway thereby avoiding any possible accidents that might have occurred. After all, even if partner does have no keycards, slam will probably still be on a finesse. But no, this reasoning is making use of the UI, and that is not allowed. So I'll be adjusting the score to 5♥+1. *Some Easts might claim that their hand is so strong that West must have at least one keycard to make enough for an opening bid. I would not agree with that.

Hawking might describe the motivation of the theory differently if he was writing for an audience of theoretical physicists. In his essays for a general audience I think he rather overplays the philosophical aspects. Surely the main reason he likes the theory is because it is sound theoretical physics.

lol, yes I was thinking that! My work is in dynamical systems, can you tell? :)

Well, actually I think that defining i as the square root of -1 and then defining the rest of the complex numbers from that is the wrong way round. It's better and less confusing to start by defining the complex plane as a whole: We define a complex number to be a pair (a, b), where a and b are real numbers. So immediately it has an obvious interpretation as a point in a plane. We call a the "real part" and b the "imaginary part". A complex number with zero imaginary part can be thought of as being a real number. That is, we associate the complex number (x,0) with the real number x. Addition is defined by (a, b) + (c, d) = (a+c, b+d). Multiplication is defined by (a, b) x (c, d) = (ac-bd, ad+bc). Having done this, now we say we will use i as a shorthand for the complex number (0,1). Then it follows from our definitions of addition and multiplication that the complex number (a, b) can also be written as a + ib, and that the square of i is -1.

Hands with long spades are good for opening 2♣, but this one falls just short in my opinion so I'd open 1♠.

For the double-squeezers: suppose that when you lead a club at trick twelve, East follows small. What do you play from hand? (East dropped the king on the third round of diamonds, of course.)

Hmm, is it balanced? I dunno, you can make the word mean whatever you want it to mean. But is it a 1NT opener? Absolutely yes.

Well, let's say we start by cashing the AKQ of spades. How do they break?

Yeah, they just stopped playing didn't they? Hopefully this can be blamed partly on the hot weather, which shouldn't be so much of a factor for the rest of the tournament. But England showed in the first half that they can play, so I'd still be reasonably optimistic. Anyway, 100-1 is silly odds. A quick search of internet betting exchanges shows that no-one is prepared to lay odds of better than about 7-1. If Roland wants to offer 100-1 he'll get an awful lot of takers.

Defence to a weak NT: 2♣ overcall shows a weak NT hand. (Yes, there really are people that play this.)

Ah good, that saves me pointing it out. ;)

Ho hum. Without really thinking about it, I would have led a small spade to the queen at trick two. The reason being that I don't fancy my chances at all if diamonds don't break, and if they do break I want the opponents to defend without knowing I have five diamond tricks to take. But if Frances is on my left that's all a bit futile :P . I'm now getting the feeling that it might be the right play for the wrong reason. By the way, it's probably better to write the bidding as - - 1♥ P P x P 1NT so that East is to the right of West. Some people seem to be assuming that the strong hand is on your left.

I would say 2♣ is the normal bid. [Edit: That's assuming you're playing some sort of Standard American. Here 2♣ keeps your options open as to whether to force to game or not. If you're playing 2/1 then you have to make that decision immediately.]

Remember to count your opponents' tricks. Can you afford to lose a diamond?

I don't agree with adjusting to 3♠ undoubled. You should try to find out what system N-S were playing, but it looks to me like they are in a game-forcing situation. (Most likely they are playing Polish Club and 2♦ is an artificial game force.) So there is no way that N-S will play in a part-score after this start. I would say that contracts of 3NT, 4♥ and 4♠ are all possibilities. Then the important question becomes, is it possible for N-S to go down in game? I think yes, this is very likely. Four of either major will almost certainly go down on a diamond lead, and 3NT is also one down on best defence. So I would be adjusting to some game contract off one.

This has to be the world's worst 16-count on the auction. The honours in clubs and hearts are worth very little, and there is every possibilty of a bad split in spades. And yet I still can't bring myself to do anything less than bid game. So 4♠ for me. I don't like 3♦, because the ♦K is the card I least want partner to have.

That's not it, at least not for me. The 1♠ opening is done mainly because it makes pard's life easier if LHO acts. I would say this hand is a two-bid hand, by which I mean that you are intending to take a second free bid in competition even if the auction has got quite high. Thus, your aim is to describe your hand as accurately as possible in two calls. So you are not really very worried about what partner does on the first round, it's more important that you choose the bid which will enable you to complete the description of your hand next time. The way to do this is to open 1♣. Having said all that, I often play systems where I am forced to open 1♠ on this type of hand (because 1♣ would be artificial) and I don't feel it's a significant loss to do that.

Since this is billed as a hand for beginners, I think the question must be, which red suit do you play first? And why does it matter?

That does not solve your problem. Who has the ace? If partner has it, you will likely want to continue the suit, whereas if declarer has it you run the risk of leading into his remaining AJ tenace. No matter what, it's a guess. Allow me to point out that if you play standard methods where ace promises the king and king shows the queen but not the ace, it will make life so much easier for yourself and not least your partner. I find it hard to believe that you could write this if you had actually read the whole of my post. I will repeat it here for convenience. Secondly, no matter what your leading style is, you will have to decide, - What is our primary signal on the lead of the ace? - What is our primary signal on the lead of the king? Frances said in her original post that on balance it seems more useful to get count on a king lead (assuming we always lead the K from KQ). Of course, once you've made that decision, there are going to be some hands where it is not successful. The lead from KQx(x) when declarer might have Axx or AJx is one such problem. But once you've decided to show count you can't get away from that. This problem is not related to what you choose to lead from AK. But once you've decided that you generally want attitude on an ace lead and count on a king lead, then it makes sense to vary your lead from AK if you think you know what signal you want.

People still seem to misunderstand what this method is all about. First of all, it is based around the "standard" method of leading top from sequences. So from KQ empty the lead is the king. Not the queen! You only lead the queen from this holding if you are prepared to risk the consequences of partner playing you for QJ. Secondly, no matter what your leading style is, you will have to decide, - What is our primary signal on the lead of the ace? - What is our primary signal on the lead of the king? Frances said in her original post that on balance it seems more useful to get count on a king lead (assuming we always lead the K from KQ). Of course, once you've made that decision, there are going to be some hands where it is not successful. The lead from KQx(x) when declarer might have Axx or AJx is one such problem. But once you've decided to show count you can't get away from that. This problem is not related to what you choose to lead from AK. But once you've decided that you generally want attitude on an ace lead and count on a king lead, then it makes sense to vary your lead from AK if you think you know what signal you want.

But is it worth opening 11-12 balanced hands if you don't have a mini NT opening available? If you have to open these hands with 1♣ or 1♦ it's a very different question.

Oh, this is just getting silly. :unsure: All I am saying is that foo's statement, "If you make most games you bid at IMPs, then you are not bidding enough games." is false. I'm afraid I can't explain this any better without repeating myself. I will now have to stop posting in this thread before it drives me insane.

I just made the numbers up, I don't claim to know what the exact distribution of probabilities is. You could do a simulation to get a better idea. I think that an average of about 70% sounds about right though, and is possibly even a little conservative - note that there are a lot of hands where game is laydown. This is vacuously true: if you restrict your attention to hands which have a chance of about 3/8 of making, then it should not surprise you that about 3/8 of them turn out to make!